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Writer's pictureDoug Weiss

Chaos


Author and scientist Arthur C. Clarke famously observed that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” We might apply the same insight to our understanding of nature. On the one hand we frequently view nature as capricious and chaotic; an immensely powerful force that can upend humankind’s labors and works in an instant. Yet nature appears to exhibit order within apparent chaos. The mathematical precision of a nautilus shell, the fractal order of a flower or fern, the Mendalian outcomes of genetic progression are just a few examples of nature operating within rules that we struggle to fathom.

The greater observation—the one Clarke hints at is this. It is we who are limited in our comprehension of nature’s order. The unpredictable is nothing more than the fault line of our knowledge of a higher and far more complex order. As we grow in our understanding and move from myth to dogma, from superstition to science, we might be condescending in our dismissal of our forebear’s simplistic explanations for so-called natural phenomena. Chuckle as we may, we are no more advanced in some ways than they were in their day. The more we know, the more we come to understand what we do not know—and the still impenetrable seems nothing short of magical reality.

Open that aperture a bit wider and we might suggest that all human knowledge proceeds in this fashion—an attempt to make sense of what we observe and to integrate it into some framework; a grand explanation of life itself. I’ve come to accept that we will never reach the point where our knowledge is complete. There will always be a why left unanswered.

One might ask if this is of any importance in the scheme of our lives. Beyond the obvious; our often-feeble attempts to understand our existence, to overcome disease, prolong our lives, and shield ourselves from the vagaries of that all-powerful force of the universe—there is this: life is not random. If you accept this statement, and I most certainly do, then it follows that everything we do has effect—consequences if you will, whether good or bad. We are continually learning this lesson from birth and in the best of circumstances it leads us inevitably to moral conduct, ethical values, compassionate tolerance and awe of the universe and its creation.

When we fail to grasp this most fundamental lesson, our way is made even more difficult. We are operating in the blind, unaware when we bump into dissonance of our own making. Blame it on nature, on the universe, on God—if you believe in a higher being. But it is we who are the culprit. We rationalize, engage in a form of intellectual choreography designed to dance us away from what we intuit and know with certainty does not come from any teacher but life itself.

Recently, I lost a friend. A man of great integrity, a man who wrestled his entire adult life with why questions, and who more than most tried his best to live his life with respect for others, regard for all life, and with love of his fellow beings. To my knowledge he never came to accept God as an established fact—despite all of his reading and meditation on the subject. It matters little to me that he had no truck with religion. I know a good man when I see him. And this was a good man. He knew what the right thing to do was, not because it was proscribed by a theology, but by patient effort to understand his relation to the universe.

Someday—perhaps sooner than later, we will know enough about the working of the process that ended my friend’s life so early to prevent others from its inevitable progression. It is a disease of chaos, at least superficially, a life process gone awry. It is also life –nature operating by rules we dimly perceive. I am sad to lose the presence of my friend, his intellect, humor, intensity, and love, but I am not angry. Rather I am painfully reminded how little we know, how easy it is to rail against fate, the Universe or God at the injustice of his untimely death. What I and others who loved him have left is his inspiration—to live our lives respectfully, holding to those moral principles we know to be true, and caring for each other with compassion.

On whatever plane my friend now exists—perhaps he is laughing, and perhaps a bit incredulous at how little we humans still comprehend about ourselves and life. When I get there too, I hope he’ll explain it to me.


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